In a bid to reduce the number of households still gripped in subsistence economic activities and ways of survival (mainly through rudimentary agriculture, gathering, & hunting), President Museveni came up with the Parish Development Model (PDM) under his current term of government with a strict focus to promote wealth creation.
According to Secretary to Treasury Ramathan Goobi, as of last November, Shs2.06trn had been given out or disbursed to the targeted households through a total of 10,589 parishes.
The program intervention seeks to impact 3.5 million households of Uganda, which the latest census confirmed to be under the subsistence way of life.
President Museveni has been on a countrywide tour of the country to ascertain how well the PDM program is performing.
He has been outspoken against lower-level local government officials who have been acting corruptly while implementing the program. He rightly fears that, if not identified and sanctioned early, such saboteurs can frustrate and fail his otherwise well-resourced and well-intentioned program.
In the 2024 census final report, authored by some of Uganda’s most eminent statisticians led by Dr. Albert Byamugisha and Dr. Chris Mukiza, it illustrated how the different regions of the country have fared under the Parish Development Model.
Whereas Busoga is the worst-performing and therefore the least impacted, with only 14% of the intended households benefiting, Sebei and Kampala Subregions are so far the best-performing, with 76% and 69% of the intended households benefiting, respectively.
The 2024 census report authors define subsistence households as those whose members can’t adequately afford or meet their most basic daily needs. And it’s that state of affairs that the PDM intervention seeks to mitigate.
The census final report indicates that in Ankole, only 31% of the intended households had been impacted by PDM as of last November. The other sub regions fared as follows: Rwenzori 29%, Kigezi 28.4%, Tooro 34%, Bunyoro 21%, Buganda 23%, Bukedi 18%, Bugisu 44%, Lango 18%, Karamoja 20%, Acholi 22%, Madi 23%, and West Nile 18%.
As defined under the census survey report language, a household is a group of people who live and eat together. The census report shows that Uganda currently has 10.7 million households, of which 3.5 million fall under a subsistence way of life, and according to the president, these require urgent rescue.
